Kalmadi's corrupt ways extended to National Games too?

New Delhi, Apr 27: Former Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee Chief Suresh Kalmadi's woes seem to be getting bigger and vast. After being arrested by the CBI for misappropriations in various deals with agencies during the Commonwealth games, it seems that he took to corruption even after the games ended. There are reports that he engaged in inflated pricing of the Time scoring equipment for the National Games in Jharkhand as well.

The CBI had arrested him after attaining crucial evidence in the time-keeping contract with a Swiss Co that exclusively led to a loss of Rs 50 crores to the games budget. The CBI is in the process of investigating if the misappropriation extended to the National Games also.

The Indian arm of the Swiss Co, Gem International was found to have awarded the time keeping contract following an internal audit by the Jharkhand vigilance department. Questions were raised over awarding the deal to the same company. The contract was made at an inflated rate at Rs 880.77 lakh with Gem International while another company, Shiv Naresh Sports had quoted a considerably lower rate of Rs 155.86 lakh for the same equipment.

A letter written by SM Hashmi, a Kalmadi-aide and Organising Secretary of National Games has added meat to the doubts that says that the list of equipments were indeed approved by Kalmadi himself and discussions on this were held in Delhi.

Representatives of Gem International was summoned by the CBI for questioning on Tuesday. The investigative agency was seeking answers to how the money traveled from the Swiss Co to Kalmadi's coffers. Kalmadi had argued that he was not personally responsible for the purchases and a separate committee was constituted to do so.